"This call is from a debt collector and all information will be used for that purpose. This call may be recorded."

Most debt collectors record all their calls. They do this for their own benefit. When they call you or vice versa, you should absolutely do the same, every single time.

Why?

Calls from debt collectors can be stressful and harrowing because they're calling you to try and force you to do something you either cannot or really don't want to do. They don't make a living being friendly and understanding. For the most part, the only restrictions on what a collector can say or do is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which bans "false, deceptive, or misleading" remarks, "unfair or unconscionable" tactics, threats of illegal activity, that sort of thing. But the line between tough negotiation and deception or illegal threats is blurry, and often collectors will step (or leap) across it when they think it'll close an account. If you catch them doing this, you can force them to pay you what essentially amounts to a fine under federal law.

When you have a nasty call from a collector, the only way to know for sure whether they broke the law is to talk to a consumer attorney, who generally will review your claim for free (certainly we would), since the same law that lets you collect a fine also lets them collector their attorney fees from the debt collector. But there's a big difference between your word and a recording. For example, if a potential client tells me a collector threatened to throw their family out on the street, I would be reluctant to take the case even if I completely believed in the person's honesty. Memory is a tricky thing, and I don't want to put a lot of time and energy into a lawsuit only to find out from the debt collector's recording that what he actually said was "if we do sue you get a judgment, we could potentially attempt to garnish your wages directly" (which is totally true and fine). If you record your own calls, you can be totally sure what got said, and so can any attorney.

So how do you record a call?

First thing's first: check your state laws. A few states don't let you record a phone call without the other side's consent. But most do. Find your state's status here.

If you have an iPhone, here is a guide to downloading an using a call recorder. If you have an Android phone, use this guide. If a collector calls you for the first time, say you'll call back in two minutes, install and run this app, and then call them back.

Minnesota will soon be host to three law schools rather than four. William Mitchell College of Law, best known for producing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Berger, and Hamline University School of Law, which you may know because I attended it for a year before transferring and now all my friends there hate me forever, will merge into the Mitchell|Hamline College of Law, which I challenge you type without pausing and looking at your keyboard partway through.

To know why, we have to go back to 2008. When the economy crashed, a lot of college grads, then facing a much leaner job market plus a whole load of more experienced, recently-unemployed job-seekers, stampeded to professional school. This is a smart and logical thing, to a degree (actual stampedes exist for a reason). Many law students who entered school in the worst of the recession graduated into a bull market with a graduate degree that set them up for a good job. Yet this was far from a universal experience, and hardly the real story of law school at the turn of the decade. As a Texas Supreme Court justice pointed out, "in 2013 there were, on average 3.31 bar admittees for every law job in the country." Ouch.

The rush overran the legal market, which was contracting anyway alongside many other white collar industries thanks to the coming robot apocalypse. College students got wise, and as undergraduate degree-only prospects improved, law school enrollment declined sharply. Top schools became less selective and have done fine; smaller, regional schools, like William Mitchell and Hamline, have struggled to keep their enrollment numbers up. Both schools have seen their student bodies decline precipitously in the last few years. This probably made Hamline University proper wonder how long it could continue supporting its law school, and likely made William Mitchell fear for its very existence. The merger is one of survival and necessity, a result of market contraction and over-saturation.

Will the whole surpass its parts? Who knows. William Mitchell flared up the rankings a few years ago, and has a good "practice-ready" program going to help its students come out, er, ready to practice, which is far rarer than you'd expect. And, for what anecdotes are worth, as a former Hamline 1L I can report that the actual classroom difference between law schools of vastly different ranks is not as pronounced as you'd think. A good civil procedure teacher is a good civil procedure teacher. If Mitchell|Hamline produces quality lawyers, reads the market well, and adjusts its enrollment expectations accordingly, it could pull this off, however the rankings read.

Did you know that after a while debts become too old to legally collect? If you are an industry insider, you are mouthing "yes, duh, of course I know all about statutes of limitations." If this is you, enjoy that warm feeling of knowingness. If this is not, let me tell you: debts can become too old to legally collect. Here is some information about how and when debts become too old to collect anymore.

Here is a list of every state's debt expiration date, courtesy of Bankrate. Do you live in Kansas? Your debts can't be collected anymore after three years of non-payment. Do you live in Kentucky? Your state government prefers the plush company of credit tycoons to its own citizens, and has set the limit at 15 years. Tennessee is only six years, if you're looking for somewhere close by that is similarly shaped.

Now, when I say "collect" I mean "be sued for." While you can't be sued for an expired debt, debt collectors can still call you up and try to harass you into paying or, more ironically, play to your sense morality and ask you to pay voluntarily. There are entire collection companies that make their buck collecting these incredibly low-priced expired debts, such as the company in Bad Paper, a book about collectors that I reviewed two weeks ago, which is short and good and you should read it.

All this suggests the question: morally, do you owe debts after their expiration date?

No, you do not. When you signed a contract for your credit card, you gave your bank your word that you would pay them back for any money they lent you, plus interest, and agreed that if you didn't, they would be able to sue you for your debt or sell it to a professional suer, up to a certain point. You both signed a contract with a morality expiration date. Your bank knew this. Your bank helped your state legislature set the expiration date. When your bank, or the collector they sell your debt to, sleeps at the wheel and lets a debt lapse, they have failed only themselves. They have failed to enforce their rights, and you do not owe them a penny for this. This is their problem. If the roles were reversed, would your bank pay you back after the expiration date? Your bank would fight you to the Supreme Court to not have to pay you back. Devotees of Any Rand shout this from the rooftops: in our postmodern, objectivist society, acting in a way other than in your own rational self-interest is morally wrong. Paying a debt that cannot be forcibly taken from you is wrong and inefficient, and, in some subtle economic way, hurts society. Do not do it.

The Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled last month that collectors must tell you when your debt is expired-- that it is misleading to withhold this critical information from people. If a collector calls you up and says that you owe $4,934 on a credit card you took out in the Clinton Administration, and then adds, in a clipped, monotone collector script, that this debt "can go ahead and no longer be within the statute of limits for collection accounts" or some such gibberish, hang up the phone and write them a letter immediately telling them never to speak to you again. This is the only right way to handle expired debts.

2. Have "monthly income . . . not be higher than 1,250 kuna" (about $185) (welfare recipients can qualify as well);

3. Not own property or have any savings whatsoever.

Now, this is not the great egalitarian debt cancellation that our present order so greatly needs. But it will help the absolutely, barrenly impoverished climb from their knees to their feet, and for that Croatia should be applauded. If only that it proves that this sort of relief is not unthinkable.

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